Restaurants Leverage Back-of-House Tech to Boost Employee Retention

As restaurants look to weather ongoing labor challenges, many restaurant brands have noted that it is not hiring but retention wherein the heart of their challenges lie. Consequently, many brands are turning to tech solutions to boost employee satisfaction and keep operations running smoothly and in turn maintain the customer experience.

Jake Guild, senior vice president and chief accounting officer at BJ’s Restaurants and Brewhouse, which owns and operates 214 casual dining restaurants in 29 states, explained to PYMNTS in an interview how the brand is boosting efficiency to improve employee satisfaction.

“We’re working on a number of different [retention-boosting] things,” Guild said. “Some of it stems from how we operate our restaurants, and coming up with newer technology that simplifies the interaction between our guests and our restaurants.”

He cited the example of order status boards, which the brand is testing at select locations, to update third-party delivery drivers on the orders that they are picking up, rather than requiring these drivers to take up employees’ time by asking them for updates. Additionally, the company is offering loyalty members the option to pay for their meal via their phones, saving the employee the work of dropping off and picking up the check.

These sorts of initiatives are especially important given that, when restaurants experience difficulty hanging onto employees, they in turn find it more difficult to meet order demand and to maintain their standard of service, and so they risk losing sales and alienating their customers.

Research from the 2022 edition of PYMNTS’ “Restaurant Readiness Index,” created in collaboration with Paytronix, which drew from a survey of more than 500 managers of quick-service restaurants (QSRs) and full-service restaurants (FSRs) across the country, found that about one in three restaurants report that their level of service has decreased as a result of staffing issues. Additionally, 29% of restaurants reported that they have not been able to open as many tables as they otherwise could.

Read more: More Than Half of Restaurants Depend on Digital Sales, Despite Uptick in On-Premises Orders

Moreover, the study found that 46% of managers reported facing difficulty in retaining employees in the previous three months, and chain restaurants experienced these difficulties more so than their independent counterparts.

See also: Nearly Half of Restaurants Struggle to Hire, Retain Employees

Consequently, another retention-boosting technology that BJ’s is leveraging is on-demand payments via financial services company DailyPay across its restaurants, a partnership that the restaurant announced earlier this month. Guild explained that, while it is too early for hard data on the effectiveness of the technology, the brand has seen anecdotally seen “positive signs” among those who have signed up on-demand payments “with regards to retention.”

Along similar lines, the company is also testing software to streamline tipping to make sure employees get paid out in a timely fashion even if their shift ends before one of their tables leaves and their next shift is not for several days. This test comes as many restaurants note employees’ increasing demand for shift flexibility and for more immediate access to payment.

The initial promising results of the company’s DailyPay rollout will likely lead to further explorations of technologies to boost employee satisfaction going forward.

“I think the earned wage access is just the beginning of probably a very large, integrated set of services that can be offered in the same way,” Guild said, “and so I’m excited for what’s to come.”